The rain traced the crooked outline of the city’s streets and alleys; in the darkness of night, scattered points of light spread thinly across the scene.
A faint crackling sound rose up — a spark of fire flying briefly past the narrow eaves before vanishing into the darkness under the falling rain. Beneath the eaves, the rain fell in an unbroken curtain, its sound flowing freely through the dark courtyard. Rain and darkness were the themes of this night; the torch on the wall was the only source of light in this small space, illuminating only a little of the surroundings amid the wind and rain.
In the heavy rain, aside from the sound of the rain itself, everything was very quiet. There was no moonlight, no early autumn insects; the outlines of the clinic and the academy to the side had already faded from sight.
On previous nights, the clinic nearby had usually been noisy — doctors and assistants coming and going, the sound of medicine being boiled in the little kitchen, the moans of the various wounded and sick, and grumbling voices, all mixing together. Out on the road beyond the courtyard gate, passersby would come and go — those who dared walk at night these days were mostly soldiers or jianghu men, drunk or having lost a fight, muttering nonsense, approaching from a distance and then fading away again.
Tonight, though, all of that seemed cut off, sealed away.
The girl changed the torch under the eaves.
The new torch was fitted into the wall. The old one, burned down to a stub, fell to the ground; in the flickering light, the girl’s movements seemed a little flustered as she kicked the spent torch out into the rain, where its light wavered and then vanished, spinning away in the running water.
The wall of the house was broken, and the torch was wedged into the gap, lighting the outside as well as the inside. Inside, the young man in scholar’s robes sat reading, occasionally looking up to speak. The girl passed back and forth along the eaves, sometimes sitting down on the threshold with her chin resting in her hands. It was a simple, rainy night; with half the house broken open, master and servant exchanged only the occasional simple word.
“Just finished washing the bowls,” Xiao Chan said, counting off on her fingers. “Then I washed the clothes, but there’s nowhere to hang them…”
“Hm?”
“So they’re still in the basin… I wonder if it’ll rain this hard again tomorrow…”
…
“The other day, old Physician Liu at the clinic said there’s a kind of herbal tea that’s good for your injury, master…” Xiao Chan said, sitting on the threshold, the thought suddenly occurring to her.
“Herbal tea?”
“Mm-hm, I forgot to ask at the time, I’ll go ask old Physician Liu tomorrow. I’ll go help out at the clinic too…” the little maid nodded.
…
“Master, so many people with broken arms and legs came into the clinic yesterday — do you think they were wounded soldiers brought back from Jiaxing?” she asked, lowering her voice.
“Probably not — that’s too far away.”
“Oh. It’d be nice if they were, though,” Xiao Chan said, tilting her head back. “How much longer is this war going to go on…”
…
Time passed in this way, hard to measure — perhaps it was already deep into the night, or perhaps deep night was still a long way off. Xiao Chan probably wasn’t speaking because she truly had something to say; it was more that, through the sound of her own voice, she was confirming to herself that she and Ning Yi were still together, in some form or another.
Of course, on ordinary nights, it was nothing unusual for master and servant to chat idly about this and that. But tonight was different. Xiao Chan wanted to say something, yet the words that came out felt slightly forced — giving off the sense of someone talking just to fill the silence, without quite daring to say what was really on her mind. More often, she simply sat on the threshold watching Ning Yi, or watching the great hole in the roof where the raindrops kept falling, or found herself some small task to occupy her hands. As a maid, she knew better than to disturb him while he was reading. Neither of them was sure how much time had passed when Ning Yi looked up and caught the girl’s gaze on him from across the room. They looked at each other like that for a moment before she said quietly, “Master, do you miss Young Mistress and the others?”
Living together under circumstances like these was, in many ways, an intensely oppressive experience. Amid the chaos of war, people were as insignificant as ants. Ever since being captured, Xiao Chan had stayed by Ning Yi’s side the whole time; in the first few days, she’d even needed to hold his hand while sleeping just to feel settled enough to rest. Deep down, she had thought — no matter what happened, if anyone ever tried to separate her from her master, she might simply have no choice but to die.
That hadn’t happened, but there were always doctors nearby, patients, the two guards who watched them constantly, and quite possibly other unseen eyes keeping tabs on them as well. Though the two of them had exchanged some words of comfort with one another, they hadn’t really spoken much about the situation they were in, for fear that someone might notice what they were thinking or sense any weakness in their hearts. Xiao Chan simply told herself that being able to stay with her master was enough; she shouldn’t ask for more — asking would be no use anyway. If he had a plan and needed her for it, he would say so when the time came; if not, she would only be adding to his troubles by bringing it up.
Within arm’s reach, yet surrounded on all sides by enemies. In an atmosphere where it always felt as though someone might be watching, the two of them had, without quite meaning to, grown accustomed to staying quiet. They tried, as much as possible, to go about tending wounds, doing chores, and simply living as they always had — perhaps that was the only way to avoid falling apart. But it was also only on a night like tonight, when the whole world seemed cut off and, for the moment, safe, that Xiao Chan felt able to ask a question like this in a small voice.
Ning Yi looked at her for a while, then closed the book. “I do miss them. I don’t know how they’re doing.”
“Young Mistress and Juan’er and Xing’er must have made it back to Huzhou, right?”
“Your mistress has too stubborn a temper for her own good, but…” Ning Yi thought it over. “She does know how to judge what matters and what doesn’t when it counts. Barring any accident, I think she’ll be fine.”
Xiao Chan nodded, hugging her knees, resting her chin on them for a long moment before looking up again and asking softly, “Master… will we ever be able to go back?”
It was a question she’d likely been holding in for a long time, knowing full well there wasn’t much point in asking it — but a girl still wants something to hold onto. Ning Yi nodded, and, as with the previous question, answered honestly rather than brushing it aside: “There’s still a chance. They captured us, and they haven’t dealt with us yet — there’s always an opportunity somewhere in that. Besides…” he paused, then simply nodded again. “Don’t worry. Just like on the road when we were fleeing — there will always be an opening eventually. One day I’ll find their weakness, and I’ll make them pay dearly for it.”
Xiao Chan pressed her lips together. “Just — please don’t get hurt again, master…”
“Heh…” Ning Yi laughed, then his gaze turned cold. “Actually, the fact that we were caught might not be entirely because Fang La’s people are so capable. It might just as well be because our own side is rather capable too.”
“Hm?” Xiao Chan’s eyes went wide.
“From what you told me, before we got scattered, there was already some indication that people in Fang La’s army wanted to capture me specifically. I was unconscious at the time and didn’t know about it, but Fang La’s forces had already regrouped by then, and they kept getting beaten along the way. Someone sent a whole squad to protect me, and yet somehow we still ended up discovered — it might have been Tang Xiuxuan, or it might have been Chen Xingdu. Either way, these people were using me as bait.”
“Wha— what?” Hearing Ning Yi say this so calmly, Xiao Chan clenched her small fists and stood up. “How could they do that? Master, you saved every single one of them…”
Ning Yi watched her righteous indignation and smiled, setting the book down, reaching over to take her hand and pull her closer. The little maid, who had just been fuming with anger, flushed red at once but didn’t dare resist. Ning Yi didn’t stop there — he had originally been sitting on the room’s one and only stool, and now he pulled Xiao Chan onto his lap, the motion so natural that she shrank back a little but didn’t fight it, only listening as he went on talking.
“It’s nothing so strange, really. For one thing, these men have spent their whole lives grasping for power, and my accomplishments were too great — perhaps the only way to make them look competent was to diminish mine. It’s a complicated business. For another, this Liu Dabiaozi fellow who was after me clearly has deep backing, and their relentless pursuit must have put a lot of pressure on our side too. Using me as bait might have just been a precaution, nothing more — whether it actually came to pass was simply my bad luck. If I hadn’t fallen ill, I should have seen it coming.”
He laughed. “Though, of course, if I hadn’t fallen ill, they probably wouldn’t have dared try something like that in the first place either. In that situation, sending out a small squad to protect me, separate from the main army — if the enemy came charging in, what good would that squad have really been? Now that they’ve gone back without me, all the credit falls to men like Tang Xiuxuan and Chen Xingdu, and they’ve conveniently avoided any comparison with me too. That’s the real win-win, the perfect happy outcome for everyone involved. Listening to you talk about how things were back then these past few days, I’ve more or less worked it out.”
Xiao Chan, cheeks still burning, said, “If they’re going to act like that… if we go back, if we ever go back…”
“We’ll deal with what happens when we get back, once we get back. There’s no use being angry about it now. Honestly, I’m more worried right now about your mistress and the child she’s carrying. Someone’s likely to come talk to me in the next few days — I’ll ask about it then, and I should… get some answers. I already feel like it’s a bit late, though the later it is, in some ways, the better.”
Ning Yi’s words came out a little disjointed; with Xiao Chan held in his arms like this, her mind in a jumble, it was hard for her to make much sense of talk of conversations, of early or late. But the last line, at least, she understood clearly enough: “I — I… wherever master is, that’s where Xiao Chan will be.”
“Mm.” Ning Yi nodded. “Well then — it’s getting late. We should probably get some sleep.”
“Er…” Xiao Chan’s body went rigid all at once. “But…”
Before she could finish, Ning Yi had already lifted her up. Her mind went completely blank; she nearly curled into a tight little ball in his arms, stiff and unmoving, not daring to struggle. Outside, the rain kept falling.
There was only one bed in the room. She was set down upon it.
In truth, this moment had perhaps not come entirely without warning, for either of them. Ever since Ning Yi had fallen through the roof that afternoon and her own small bed could no longer be used, the little maid had likely already begun to sense that certain things were coming. The whole evening’s back-and-forth — Xiao Chan talking just to fill the silence, yet never quite daring to say what she meant — had, in large part, come from exactly this.
…
The rain stopped, quietly, sometime deep in the night.
When Ning Yi opened his eyes, he saw the pale glow of night sifting down through the great gap in the roof; the air after the rain seemed steeped in light, like amber tinged blue-green. Through that vast broken opening, he could see the river of stars turning in the sky above.
No matter the era, only that river of stars, perhaps, remained truly unchanging. He had seen it many times before now, in different places, under different moonlight, different starlight — in different lives, different stations, different states of mind. Some images came to him — towering buildings, airplanes, ships — and then, in his mind, they shifted into those old, simple structures, courtyard after courtyard.
“Master, master…”
“Master, master, it’s Xiao Chan…”
“My name is Xiao Chan…”
The memory of the first time he’d heard that voice seemed to rise up in his mind, and then his thoughts came flooding in like a tide. He tightened his arms around the girl in his embrace.
It had been two and a half years since he’d come to this world.